Widow

Centuries ago, there was life and obsession, a terrible hunger to understand the secrets of the universe hidden from man. From pagan witches hiding in the seeming of washer-women and priests in need of physical sating, the woman who would become the White CHAPTERTHREE: 75 Widow learned a few of the whispered truths of the hidden gorld. She saw the spirit of her husband leave his diseased ody one cold night, and she lay with the cooling corpse to earn its mysteries. Sometime after that came the Blood and vith it an altogether different hunger. Then, not so much ater, she was drawn into the ravaged lands of the dead. The ietty secrets of ghosts and decay she had longed to undertand were finally laid bare, but they paled before the great torm there. Here was death in its most primal form not quiet rest, not a reward or punishment for living acts, not state of higher being, but a final end to all things. Innumerable years later, thestormsweptherbackontothe hores of the living. With the sound of ripping skin and crying nothers, the shroud between lands tore open and the White Widow slipped out. Her girlish faith had long since eroded way, but in that moment she knew God had a sense of irony. ;or why else would the dead spit her out into a birthing ward? why else would the fresh-born blood ofbabes be laid out to sate ier hunger? Her skin, ash-white and wrinkled from the rigors if walking among the shades, flushed for a sweet second as the lot vitae of the first infant passed her lips. The screaming of hildren, mothers, nurses and others was like sweet music to her lry and cracked ears. But the hunger never ended. She stumbled through the night, lurking in shadows, loping against hope to find some sort of peace. Semi[elirious, reeling from the cacophony of the strange city, she mnd herself drawn to an archeological site in the midst of his modem megalopolis, the Templo Mayor. There, she ollapsed before a carved wall of skulls, hoping against hope hat they would lead her back to the lands of the dead. That ; where the koldun Esteban del Agua y Tierra found her. He heltered her and brought her blood that of infants, which he now found sweetest and introduced her to the Final rlights. He helped her piece together not only the realities of nodern life and unlife, but the reality of dawning Gehenna. mat had been mere myths in her early nights were now true and the reality of her current situation was clear: Death was coming on an unprecedented scale, and she was here to witness it. This belief, and the circumstances of her discovery in front of the wall of skulls known as the tzomgantli, helped baptize her bloodline as the Harbinger of Skulls. Since then, she and the Tzimisce Esteban have grown closer, bonded as a pack of two by a ritual he calls the Vaulderie. In 2000, they cooperated to unseal the chantry of the vanished Tremere untieribu Elena Vasquez, which laid open to them a vast array of thaumaturgical research and other secrets. Esteban’s interests lie in power in the face of the apocalypse, and she is glad to help him along, despite such a gambit’s futility. In the end, everything will meet death. La Viuda Blanca nests in the chantry that once sheltered the Tremere antihibu Elena Vasquez. Essentially a series of subterraneanvaultsunderagentlemen’sclub intheteocalli, the chantry is a warren of libraries and laboratories, dissection tablesandblooddistil1eries.The Widowhastransformedmuch of the space to suit her mortuary needs, including starting her own ~ompaneli made of the skulls of her infant victims. One of Mexico’s greatest unliving occultists, the White Widow is privy to many arcane secrets. The most critical come from her analysis of the research of Elena Vasquez, a brilliant thaumaturge obsessed with the End Times. The warlock herself seems to have been convinced she was working to prevent or forestall Gehenna, but the Widow suspects Elena was a dupe. It’s entirely possible her experimentation was part of the lead up to these Final Nights. As a prominent Harbinger of Skulls in the sect’s epicenter, the White Widow has significant influence in the Sabbat’s occult circles. Ever since she and Esteban opened up Vasquez’s thaumaturgical libraries, the two have received the shadowy support of several Old World koldun as well. Unre is said to keep a close eye on their research as well, though the two Harbingers have different agendas. All this attention, paired with the fact that she chooses not to play political games, means that the Widow has leave from the cardinals and seraphs to pursue her research. Unknown to them, she is also recruiting a variety of neonates she believes will play a role in the coming apocalypse. Mwco Cm BY N m 76

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